


No One Knows Who I am

by childishillusions



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, pre-stream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 03:24:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5481617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/childishillusions/pseuds/childishillusions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The captain of the vessel who found Percy in the river worries a little over the mysterious white haired young man. Later a slightly drunken Percy reveals a couple of curious abilities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No One Knows Who I am

The young exiled noble stared at his hands listlessly for a couple of seconds as he tried to remember just what he had been doing. Percy looked around the fishing boat then looked back down at his hands, recently calloused by the ropes (among other things) he had been handling. He supposed he was grateful for the fishermen for dragging him out of the icy river and dragging his semi-conscious form to the cleric in the small village so that he wouldn’t die of hypothermia (or the only half-healed injuries that doctor Ripley had inflicted on him, but only the cleric had seen them).

In exchange for his life, he had offered to work for the captain of the vessel who had taken him aboard. He freely admitted to not knowing much about sailing or fishing, but that he would do his best. The captain had kindly agreed to let him work off the debt and he learned what he could from the more experienced sailors and when the last time they had dealt with a customer, Percy had (correctly) commented that the other was trying to short-change them for a very fresh batch of rather rare fish. He had pointed out that these fish could only be found once a year and that due to the sweet, delicate flavor of the fish (among other reasons) the main consumers of these fish were nobles due to their expense.

He had gotten rather involved in haggling with the at first stubborn and then utterly silent vendor, to the point that Percy had not realized that most of the crew of the fishing ship was listening to his elegantly worded and very persistent arguments towards the vendor paying quite handsomely for the haul. By the end of it, the man was paying three times the initial sum and had readily agreed to buy any of the fish that they had when they stopped at this port again for similar prices. That had been a couple of weeks ago and the occasional looks of surprise and assessment that the crew stared at him with (along with the captain) made the white haired noble more than a little nervous.

But they had yet to turn northwards, much less far enough north to be concerned about going back… Back _there_. Percival just wished that they would ask if they wanted to know. Not that he would tell them the truth. Not the full truth at any rate… Then again they had all been present when he was dragged up in the net, half-dead from the icy cold of the river and battered badly to boot.

“Percy! You lost in yer head again?” The quartermaster – a broad and tall for a dwarf called out, clapping him on one shoulder and startling Percy out of his revelry.

The exiled noble let out a small yelp of surprise at the sudden voice and contact, leaping away in the same moment and unable to control his shaking for a full five seconds before ruthlessly squashing down the fearful skittishness that Doctor Ripley had instilled in him during his time as her captive/play thing. “Ah! S-sorry sir. I did get a little distracted, I will try not to be idle.” With that he darted off to assist several of the other sailors in stowing away one of the nets. They were headed back towards the nearest port, in the hopes they would outrun the storm that ominously stretched as far as the eye could see left and right. It dominated the sky and seemed to swallow the horizon to where the sea and sky seemed to meet.

The quartermaster frowned at the human’s reaction and found the captain, making sure to keep his voice down “I found him staring him off in the distance, northwards as he always does when he gets distracted, and when I brought him back to us he yelped like I touched a branding iron to his belly. I’ve seen rabbits less skittish than him. Gods I wish he’d tell us why we found him half-drowned in a river in mid-January.”

The captain frowned at the other’s words. “He speaks like a noble, even when he’s trying to adopt the turn of phrase we have and did you know that he completely fixed all of our lanterns once Smithy mentioned that we were running low on oil? They are twice as bright as before and use half the oil. He also added a little lever thing that allows us to adjust the light level of the lanterns if we need to. He has clever hands and a brighter mind… But the haunted look in his eyes… and his bunkmates have reported that he has nightmares when he doesn’t work himself until he drops on the deck. He apparently screams like a man tortured – or possessed and pleads for a _Cassandra_ to stay with him. Sometimes there are others he calls for, but she’s the most he calls for. We’re going to have the lads and lasses get him good and drunk and see if we can gently pry out what the hell happened to him before we found us.”

“That and we nearly ran into trouble – That cleric we brought him to? He nearly told the town guards that we or someone aboard was beating and _stabbing_ Percy for our own twisted amusement. It was only after he told them that we had just fished him out of the river and his injuries were from before he had been rescued by us. The cleric could sense that Percival was telling the truth and we were allowed to go on our way with him in tow.” The dwarf responded, his frown deepening as he tugged consideringly on his beard. “He’s been tortured – mind as well as body and that takes a toll on anyone. I just hope he doesn’t break from it.”

~

Percival had not drunken much alcohol before tonight. For one he had not been old enough according to his parents, and he was beginning to _sincerely_ regret taking up the challenge that some of his crewmates had issued. Apparently the rumors that sailors – or most sailors – could drink an impressive amount of the stuff. Why they liked the brew the exiled noble was uncertain. Ale had a pleasant taste at first, but there was a bitter burn at the back of his tongue that would take some getting used to. The stiffer drinks that he had been poured and then dared to drink burned like liquid fire going down and caused him to cough and sputter.

His head was floating strangely and his thoughts were blurring together strangely. He was grateful that they were staying at the inn, as when he went over to the only empty seat that he could find that wasn’t near his obviously-bad-influencing crewmates, he found that his legs would not quite agree to where he was going and his head spun unpleasantly.

Still, despite the fact that the bench was made simply from solid wood and nothing more it was comfortable. He half-slumped across the table-thing and stared at it. It took him a full twenty second to realize that it wasn’t an oddly-shaped table, but a piano. An ache of remembrance tore at his soul as he lifted the cover and pressed a couple of the keys. He frowned as the notes sounded off-key. He staggered over to the back of the piano and pushed the top of it up and quickly tuned the piano to what he remembered were the right sounds.

Or at least when he pressed each of the keys – the off-white and the mostly-black ones – they each sounded sweet and clear. As no one came over to chase him away from the piano he began to play one of the songs that had been drilled into him by his father.

_“A noble must be able to entertain others, Percival.” The de Rolo patriarch had instructed, looking sternly at the young, pouty child who stared up at his father from behind the instrument that all-but swallowed his tiny form. “I will teach you how to play the piano and sing. You will practice both every day, do you understand?”_

_“Yes fathew.” He responded, still pouting a little, but as he first started to press the keys his eyes lit up in wonder at the pretty sounds they made._

They were mainly cheerful tunes, mixed with the occasional waltz. He had to move his hands carefully and more deliberately than he normally would as the alcohol was muddling his mind and blurring the keys together in a confusing, blank canvas, punctuated by spots of darkness…

Percival’s treacherous hands started to play a song that was slower and less cheerful than the others. The main room was crowded was all sorts of people, and he couldn’t recognize anyone immediately – at least not in his partially drunken state and with all of the grace and poetry in his soul, he began to sing quietly the conflicted and miserable emotions that were tearing his soul – or at least his heart – apart:

“Look at me and tell me who I am,

Why I am, what I am.

Call me a fool and it’s true I am,

I don’t know who I am.”

His family, home and title stripped from him unexpectedly by those who had presented themselves as potential allies in a brutal assault. He was no longer a noble – no longer what he had been partially brought up to _be_. He had his name – all five of them in a large mouthful of syllables that few this far south if any would recognize – but did it matter? Was his name: Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel kossolowoski de Rolo the third even worth the breath it took to say, the time to remember to speak correctly? He did not feel like the same person anymore. Certainly before _They_ had come he would have never thought to have come to a place like this. His hands continued to play the tune, and more words were pulled from him softly.

“It’s such a shame,

I’m such a sham.

No one knows who I am.”

None of the sailors he worked with had any of idea of who he is. Or who he had been. Certainly no one in the tavern knew who he had – up until very recently – had been. That if the Briarwoods knew he had survived and that they were helping him – however unwittingly – escape their grasp and flee to friendlier or at least uncaring lands they would probably be slaughtered to a man… He also could not quite shake the feeling that he was only playing at being a sailor. Yes, he was getting better at the tasks they set him, a voice whispered in his mind that he wasn’t doing as good as the others, and that they only kept him aboard out of pity more than anything else. He hoped that his piano playing was loud enough to cover his slightly off-key singing. He was no bard after all.

“Once there were sweet possibilities,

I could see, just for me.

Now all my dreams are just memories,

Fated never to be.”

He had so many ideas – things to craft on, things to experiment and see what they did and how they reacted to different things. Some of what he had created and found out had been useful to know. Like that the black powder that was a by-product in iron mining – even though there was only a small iron mine outside of one of the smaller towns that looked to Whitestone for protection – did have a use as an explosive, if only one could figure out how to not have it all go off at once. Or at least to be very careful in not letting any open flames around said black powder. He had also begun to work on an acid that would dissolve the Whitestone of the alabaster sierras that gave his home town it’s name more swiftly and easily into the residuum that was so desired for certain long-term kinds of spells.

But now? No family, few possessions and fleeing from the only home he had ever known.

“Time’s not a friend, hurrying past.

I wonder, who am I?

Am I the face of the future?

Am I the face of the past?

Am I the one who must finish last?”

On good days Percy was almost certain that the Briarwoods had no idea that he was alive – or if they knew they didn’t care to chase him. After all there was very little, if anything he could do to stop them from their goals. Whitestone had begun to reach out to the other cities politically as the town once again regained prominence, but none of his family had directly spoken to the rulers of other cities – nor had the rulers of the other cities. Letters and magical contact was easier and safer in many ways.

On bad days the exiled noble couldn’t stop moving around – and being indoors, even on the ship was intolerable. The wounds that had been healed perfectly by that cleric _ached_ despite the fact that he had no scars and he could swear he could see the malevolent smirk of doctor Ripley – the unnaturally pale faces of his brothers and sisters around him and the disemboweled corpses of his parents. He also could hear the horrible squelching _thuds_ of the arrows hitting Cassandra’s chest, when he blinked he saw images of her falling to the ground, the snow being stained a deep crimson by her life’s blood.

Should he find other branches of the de Rolo family and hope that they would take him in? He was fairly certain that they would – he knew things about his family’s histories that only de Rolos were taught as a precaution in case Something Terrible happened to one part of their family and the last of that particular part of their family asked for help of another…

But what would the point of that be? He still enjoyed tinkering, and had found that he liked seeing his inventions being used. The activity of a sailor suited him more than the stretches of idleness that he had dubiously enjoyed as a young noble. Learning and researching was fun, but the endless etiquette, dancing, and politics was… Boring. They might prove him to be useful – as he had managed to use some of what he had learned to ensure that they all got paid fairly for the rare fish they had found.

“Look at me and tell me who I am,

Why I am, what I am.

Will I survive?

Who will give a damn,

If no one knows who I am?”

In his home… Former home? He had been loved and loved by his siblings and his parents.  Archie, though crotchety at times had helped his parents through strife in the past and the old man had cared for each of them in his own way. The lessons Percy learned from the philosopher were always thought-provoking and much more intriguing and engaging than the boring etiquette and speech lessons that Professor Anders had been tasked with teaching himself and his siblings. The latter – treacherous bastard that he was – had also taught him how to read and write, two skills that were _extremely_ useful.

But now? He didn’t have anyone whom he called friend, much less family. He got along fine with his crewmates, but the vast majority of their time was spent doing this and that aboard the ship, and there was little time for talk. What time they did have for talk was spent explaining to him how to do the various tasks – or how to knot things securely in different ways, or how to tell what direction you were going when you had neither compass nor a reliable map. Occasionally at night those who were off0duty at the same time as he would play cards and talk, but the former noble hadn’t felt comfortable intruding on a group of people who knew one another for quite a long time, not quite trusting his senses that this was real – after all Lady Briarwood was a Spellcaster of fearsome power. Besides, even if this was real, Percival was loathe to open himself up to others. He hurt too much, was too damaged to let them in.

It wouldn’t be fair. It was better to keep a distance, that way if the worst should happen, the sailors might stand a chance at surviving, if they had the utter misfortune of stopping in Whitestone while he was aboard and happened to get spotted by either a traitor or Charmed civilian. Once he completed this fishing season he would leave this crew, travelling further south and finding what work he could find that he wanted… or at least could tolerate doing.

From the staring of the other patrons of the bar closest to the bar, they at least could hear his mournful singing and Percival’s heart jumped painfully. He was going to end this self-piteous song soon and hope that he was sober enough to slip away before someone started asking questions that he had no desire whatsoever to answer and didn’t particularly feel like potentially bullied into telling someone _something_.

“No one knows,

Not even you,

No one knows who I am…”

The song hadn’t been directed at anyone in particular, but consternation and panic settled more firmly into his chest as he realized that one of the people who had gotten close enough to listen to his soft singing was the captain of the vessel he was working on. His fingers stilled over the piano and he cleared his throat a little and spoke more loudly “Ah… I hope I did not offend anyone by playing the piano. It really is a lovely instrument, when it’s tuned correctly. I think I shall go to my room as I am more than a little… Inebriated.”

The exiled noble got up and left the bar with as much grace and speed as his partially drunken form would allow, heart pounding in his ears as he prayed to Pelor that his captain was sufficiently drunk so as to not fully remember the song he had made up on the spot in the morning.


End file.
